


If they hurt you

by redroslin



Series: The Laura Roslin soul mate AUs [4]
Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Child Abuse, F/F, Soulmate Shared Injury Trope, age gap
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-09
Updated: 2019-05-09
Packaged: 2020-02-28 20:11:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,224
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18763363
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/redroslin/pseuds/redroslin
Summary: It broke Laura's heart to know that her soul mate was being abused--and she couldn't do a damn thing about it.





	If they hurt you

_CAPRICA, BEFORE THE FALL_

 

Laura was really starting to hate mornings.

And not in the usual _pre-caffeine, underslept, hate-the-world_ sort of way. Mornings were bad since she'd started waking up to the marks of a stranger's pain stamped all over her body.

The morning after her 34th birthday, she rolled over in bed to find bruises scattered across her ribs and thighs. Her eyes burned with tears and her head was pounding and... _no_. Not again.

She laid her hand over the largest of the bruises-- _the largest she could_ _see_ , she amended mentally when moving stretched something painful in her back and neck--and raged for what felt like the millionth time at the injustice of knowing that her soulmate was being beaten half to death while she couldn't do a godsdamn thing about it.

Sharing pain with your soul mate was supposed to bring solace until you found each other. Maybe it worked that way for some, but Laura didn't find any comfort in knowing that her gods-ordained match was out there and had been hurt-- _was being_ hurt, brutally and in ways that suggested a chronic pattern of abuse--without Laura having the first clue who they were or how to help them.

"I'll kill them," she muttered, not for the first time or the last. "String them up for what they've done to you."

Fumbling for the phone on her bedside table, she hit her sister's speed dial number by feel. "It's happened again," she told Cheryl. "It might be worse this time."

"I can be there in half an hour," Cheryl said. "Don't get out of bed."

 

* * *

 

She'd never suspected she might have a soulmate until that blasted vacation she'd taken on Leonis to celebrate John's 30th. Everything else had already gone wrong on the trip--flights delayed, bad food, stormy weather. And then on their second-last day in Luminere, she came in from sunbathing with a bruise spreading across her right cheek and a wickedly bloodshot eye.

"No," she told her reflection in the palatial hotel mirror. "We aren't doing this. We aren't."

She covered the bruise with foundation and concealer and tried to pass it off as a sunburn, but there wasn't much she could do about the eye itself. John spent the rest of the trip shooting her worried glances.

What was she supposed to say? _Whoops, looks like I might have a soul mate after all? Sorry for dragging you on this total disaster of a romantic getaway under accidentally false pretenses?_

No, she couldn't tell him. Not until they were home. Not until she was sure.

 

* * *

 

Three months later, she went to take a seat while her fifth graders started their geometry test and--

_What the unholy hell?_

Someone had paddled her soul mate's ass. Not a casual spanking, either, as Laura discovered when she made her way to the restroom after walking the perimeter of the classroom for an hour. She was covered in welts: buttocks, hips, down her thighs and halfway up her back.

This... this wasn't okay. This couldn't be explained away by clumsiness.

This was... something was wrong.

 

* * *

 

"You can't get excited about this because it's _not_ good news," she said late that night, jamming her phone against her ear as she poured herself a glass of merlot.

"...Okay?" Cheryl's skepticism came through loud and clear despite vigorous chopping in the background. "I won't?"

"You will," Laura told her. "You'll try to _glass half full_ at me, and you'll wind up driving me crazy."

She knew without seeing her sister that Cheryl had shrugged. "...So I should do my best to be gloomy and pessimistic?"

Laura nodded. "Yes. Good. Thank you."

A small clatter of dishes echoed down the line. "So are you going to tell me anything?"

"Maybe," she said. "Cheryl, it's so awful, I want to be wrong about it."

"Or for crying--just tell me!"

"My soul mate is being physically abused."

"Frak," she heard Cheryl set down a heavy plate. "What soul mate? How do you know?"

"I get the evidence all over my body. Every couple of weeks."

"Since when? Why didn't you tell me?"

"Since Leonis."

"Is that why you and John...?"

"Yes," she admitted. "I couldn't bear to tell him."

"Oh, _Laura_."

"I know."

"Gods, you're like a frakking precautionary tale."

"You haven't even seen the mess that keeps showing up on my body. I look like I've been in a fight club."

"Oh, no."

"Stop it."

"At least I'm not _Pollyanna_ -ing at you. You should be grateful."

"I'm counting my blessings. And my bruises."

"Have you told Sandra?"

No need to ask whether she'd told Dad. The Roslin sisters had a tacit code of silence, now. Anything that might cheer him up, _yes_ ; anything that would bring him down, _no_.

"Not yet. You think I should?"

"Do I think you should. Stop being such a chickenshit overprotective mama bear and just tell her."

She took a sip of the merlot. "Fine. Fine, I will."

The chopping sounds started up again. "I'm sorry I can't think of anything else to suggest."

"I'd be surprised if you could."

"Maybe it'll stop on its own?"

Laura doubted it, but. "Maybe."

"Maybe you can swoop in on your white horse and rescue them."

"Living the dream, Cher." Laura sighed.

"Precautionary tale, my ass," Cheryl said. "The poor soul won't know what hit them."

"Is the 'poor soul' in this equation my soul mate, or their abuser?"

"Once you get ahold of them, I pity them both, really."

 

* * *

 

It didn't stop.

Laura spent a week with both hands in splints because her soul mate had broken all of their fingers. How the _frak_ did you break _eight fingers_ in a straight line?

 _In a machinery accident, or in a door_ , the trauma specialist Laura consulted said, when he saw the photos.

Clear enough. What was weird and inexplicable, though, was the speed with which Laura's hands started to heal. She booked a consult with a surgeon--soul mate injuries didn't usually leave permanent damage on their match but one could never be too careful. By the time she got in to see him, though, her fingers had already halfway mended.

It had itched ferociously all week, far worse than any injury she'd had before--of her own or her soul mate's. She couldn't sit still but she knew better than to mess with her hands--if she was lucky, she wouldn't need surgery. If _they_ were lucky and her soul mate's fingers were cast properly, and quickly enough. If--if--

She was going stir-crazy and it itched like the dickens. Still, she wouldn't know anything until the surgeon had a look.

But the surgeon walked in carrying her x-rays, wide-eyed and bemused, and sent her home with instructions to go back to her doctor in another week to have the splints removed. She'd be fine, and so would her other half, apparently.

"My soul mate's a mutant," she told Cheryl, "some kind of speed-healing superhero."

Cheryl laughed. "You're ridiculous."

"No. Wait." Suddenly, Laura felt cold. "Not a superhero. They're a _child_."

 

* * *

 

_Oh, gods._

All these years, she'd fantasized about picking up a ballpoint pen and writing a message on her skin--something to let her soul mate know she cared, to let them know she was trying to find them, to reach out across whatever the distance might be. She knew ink didn't always transfer but she'd have been more than willing to find out if it would for them, except--

She couldn't risk that she might make everything worse. Who knew what might tip her soul mate's attacker--lover, father, spouse?--into further abuses?

Maybe the person hurting her soul mate didn't know about Laura... and if so, it was better it stay that way.

She'd thought about it, though. She'd planned dozens of things she'd say, and then discarded them all.

But now? Knowing her soul mate must be a child? Gods, it was more tempting than ever to whip out a pen and write, _How old are you? (Are you okay? Where are you? Can I come save you?)_

But. No. She couldn't risk it.

 

* * *

 

Sometimes she wondered whether the gods meant to drive her crazy. Sometimes she thought about whether having a child as her soul mate made her a terrible person, and whether they were both being punished for it.

True platonic soul mates were rare--something like 1.8% of soul mate pairs weren't sexual or romantic pairings--but they existed. Laura and her match were probably platonic. It was the only explanation that made the age gap less disturbing.

The gods wanted her to save this poor child, but she didn't know how. There was nothing she could do.

But her soul mate was hurting, and she needed to do something--or she was going to drive Cheryl crazy or drink herself into an early grave.

 

* * *

 

Laura took stock of her life, this sane and sensible life with its sane and sensible plans, and she decided her soul mate was more important. So she quit teaching, got a master's degree in social work, and landed a job with child protection services.

Watching child after child go through hell, either with their families or in the system, while using all the tools at her professional disposal to search for her soul mate in her spare time was... well, she started to wonder whether she'd have any soul left by the time she found her match. After three years with Caprican Child Protection, she gave up the wild goose chase and went back to teaching.

Maybe she'd never meet her soul mate as a teacher. But if the gods wanted them to meet, they could damn well lend a helping hand--or at the very least, stop the one that kept raising itself against them.

 

* * *

 

It had mostly come to an end by the time Laura went into politics. The bumps and bruises she wore these days seemed like the debris of a normal, active life, and Laura hoped for her soul mate's sake that they were clear of it.

The night she slept with Sean Ellison and resolved to join Adar's campaign, she impulsively took up a pen and wrote, high on her thigh, where the mark from Sean's teeth was just beginning to turn purple, **_Are you there? I hope you're all right._**

The next morning, bleary and vaguely regretful, she looked down at her scrawl--now badly smudged and crossed out, insult to injury--below which a deliberate hand had written, **_GO FRAK YOURSELF_.**

 _Pretty darn clear_ , Laura thought. She couldn't even blame them. She'd been secondhand witness to too much and could never give back that knowledge. (The handful of sessions she'd had with the trauma specialist really had paid dividends.)

Still, it smarted.

She didn't write again. She moved on.

 

* * *

 

She looked down one morning and there was ink dancing up and down her arms--wild spirals of aquamarine and crimson, starbursts in concentric primary colours.

 _They must have been up all night,_ she thought, _or maybe they live on the other side of the world._ And then, _I have to show Cheryl and Sandra._

"Who the frak _are_ they?" Sandra exclaimed when she saw. "This isn't just some kid's scribbles, this shit is _really good_."

"They never did this before, did they?" asked Cheryl.

"No."

"I wonder what changed."

 _They're free_ , Laura thought. _They're on their own now, with no one to beat them for staying up all night drawing all over themselves._

 ** _Beautiful_** , she wrote carefully in a tiny inkless gap on her left forearm.

 

* * *

 

Her soul mate started getting hurt more regularly again, but this time Laura carried the vicarious pain (and the hangovers) with more grace, and sometimes even pride.

She felt sure, with no rational reason for being sure, that her soul mate was coming by these bruises on their own terms. They were living life hard and fast, and if that meant Laura had to bear a few bumps, well, that seemed more than fair in exchange for her soul mate's freedom.

 

* * *

 

After the concussion, she received one word, **_SORRY_** , scrawled across her left wrist.

A week later, her heart skipped when she saw more writing--then skipped again when she saw what it said.

**_CHECK YOUR BOOB._ **

What... what did that mean?

 

* * *

 

They caught the cancer in time. She had the tumor excised and agreed to the two rounds of Doloxin suggested by her oncologist--"Just to be sure. We caught it early, but you can never be too safe."

After the second round, when she was finally able to keep something down and had stopped cursing the universe for delivering her from the same disease that had taken her mother--and when Sandra and Cheryl finally stopped hovering over her like demented sheepdogs--she wrote on the inside of her left bicep, **_Thanks. Sorry about your hair._**

She watched with a fascinated thrill as ink appeared before her eyes, crisscrossing her forearm. **_I DON'T NEED HAIR TO GET LAID OR TO FLY._** Then, belatedly: **_ARE YOU GOING TO BE OKAY?_**

**_I think so. The doctor says we caught it in time._ **

**_THANK THE GODS._ **

**_No. Thanks to you._ **

No response was forthcoming. Laura hadn't really expected one.

 

(TBC)


End file.
